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Vodafone’s On-line billing goes non-secure

August 31st, 2005 Leave a comment Go to comments

Vodafone UK have redesigned their on-line billing interface (about time too) but they have either forgotten or decided to omit security in their planning. The new pages are all accessed over non-secure links.

This means that all information including billing data, usernames and passwords are all sent in the clear! This is not an acceptable situation. I have informed Vodafone, but as usual, I am still waiting for a response.

This is the warning from Firefox when you try to log in:

Passwords sent in the clear

This is the page information when you have logged in:

Page info shows no encryption

UPDATE

Vodafone’s initial response was:

Thank you for your email regarding your online billing.

Please be advised that if you are experiencing difficulties you will need to contact our E-Care department on 08700 770020 option 6 where an adviser will be happy to help.

If you have any further enquiries please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards
Becky Barnes
Vodafone Customer Services
Vodafone Limited

…which sounds like they haven’t actually read the complaint, otherwise they would know that I wasn’t experiencing difficulties.

I replied:

Thank you for your email.

Option 6 is not relevant to my complaint. Neither are any other options on that phone number.

If you cannot answer this directly, can you please forward it to the relevant department.

Once again, my complaint is that in redesigning your online billing interface, you have stopped using a secure connection. This means that usernames, passwords and other personal billing data are all sent unencrypted. This is not an acceptable situation.

Their response was still unhelpful:

Thank you for your recent mail regarding online billing.

I can confirm that our ecare department will be able to deal with your query. Please select the options advised in the previous email.

Kind Regards,
Aman Kang
Vodafone Customer Services
Vodafone Limited

I have responded with:

May I suggest that you actually ring that number and select option 6.

You will find that the options are:

  1. For assistance purchasing a contract phone online (NOT RELEVANT)
  2. For upgrades (NOT RELEVANT)
  3. For assistance purchasing a Pay as you Go phone online (NOT RELEVANT)
  4. For assistance purchasing accessories (NOT RELEVANT)

There are no other options, if you don’t choose an option (in the vain hope that you get through to an operator) you just get told to choose an option again.

Can you please therefore either give me a number to contact the people responsible for the website security or pass my complaint on to them directly as previously requested.

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